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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Hills ... then on my back

Today's run was all about hills training. The plan was calling for 15 minutes warm up, then 30 minutes hills repeat and 15 minutes to cool down. During that 30 minutes main event I had to do 6 hills repeat, something like going up a hill for two minutes then cool down on the way back down. Rinse and repeat.
During the main set I had to push enough so that I would hit high zone three and even low zone four (heart rate). Usually when I run I go by feeling, but I always have my Garmin 305 with me to record everything. That way I can analyze the data, see where I pushed enough, too much or not enough. Well, sadly for me, this morning I didn't push enough during those hills repeat. I barely hit zone three while going up the hill. I guess that I was scared to push too hard to start with and that I would get tired before the end of the workout. On a total of six hills I only pushed hard on the last one since I had plenty of energy left in the tank and knew that I could easily push on my way up.
The fact that I didn't push enough during my main set is easy to see when looking at my laps. I did run almost a minute per kilometer faster on my cool down that I did on my main set ...
As most of you know, I am from Quebec City and here it's still winter. Well today's weather was -20C with almost no wind, which makes it nice to run. On my way back home during my cool down I was running kinda fast, at least for me, and while turning on a street close to home I lost traction while running over a patch of ice and I slipped. When I say slipped I mean really, I fell on the ground and rolled till the middle of the street. Luckily I didn't hurt myself and no car were coming, but damn I wish they could put some sand on the side of the street so we can run without always have the fear that we might hurt ourselves.
A friend of mine run with some kind of traction chain under is shoes, another one uses what we call screw shoes.
I never felt like I had to. With spring coming it seems like I will have to run of ice a lot more. We will have rain, then cold which means ice and then rain again ... I don't know, maybe I could use one of my old pair of shoes and turned them into screw shoes. My Mizuno have like 400 kilometers in them, with February and March I will hit between 700 and 800 kilometers with them and it will be time for new shoes anyway. I think I will hit the hardware store on my lunch time and get me some sheet metal screws.
Training for today is
Running
Distance - 11 km
Time - 1:09:00